


The Sin of Lust is Never Cloaked.

by reygrets



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Claiming Bites, F/M, Fisherman!Ben, I wrote this for Annhoe, I'm reposting it, Loosely based on Greek Mythology, Mild mermaid seduction techniques, Mutual Pining, Siren!Rey, but go with the witcher 3 for imagery, is it furry if she's a fish, this remains for annhoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-09 04:36:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20498852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reygrets/pseuds/reygrets
Summary: “I’m Ben,” He tries, voice gone rough as though to whisper. Rey pressed her cheek into his palm and her eyes draw shut as a rippling purr worked its way up her throat. “My father told me not to come to the water -- we got in a fight, and I thought it best to disobey.” Ben didn’t seem to regret his decision, full lips half-curled into a small smile. “I’m glad I did, you’re a beautiful thing, and had I gone any other time you might not have been here to save me.”I know you’re not like the rest of your kind, I know you’re good. I know you’re not like the rest of your kind, I know you’re good. I know you’re not like the rest of your kind, I know you’re good--- maybe on this one thing, Han had been right.She smiled broadly, unbothered by the teeth it showed; all razored edges meant to hook into her prey without the chance of it breaking free, her claws splayed against the sand and they too are telling of the predator Rey was; but Ben looks on her in wonder only and she feels something stir low in her gut.





	The Sin of Lust is Never Cloaked.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).

> Hello I DELETED THIS BEFORE, but I'm reposting it because it deserves to be read. It was, previously, multiple chapters but I'll post what I have written all as one and add onto it when I'm inspired to finally get around to finishing it. Enjoy reylo fam!

It was dark, but more than the inky black of the night -- she remembers the sprawl of thick smoke and the crack of tinder as it burned. She remembers shouting, the zoom and hiss as harpoons broke through the mirrored surface and more she remembers the wailing of her mother, arms tight around her middle and a desperation in her sea-glass eyes.

  
  


A promise, as she, then a pup, was tucked away into a split barrel that smelled far too sweet and was lined in wheat that soaked up the foam and chafed the sensitive skin of her pudgy little arms.

  
  


I’ll come back for you sweetheart.

  
  


The waves that rocked her back and forth in the rank cradle were made by the front of the ship, and not the ebb and flow of nature’s tides. It carved through the water in an unholy fashion that cut of her sight from the rest of them . From her family.

  
  


Nets were cast, and drawn; ashen webbing that she could hear the wet thump of tails fighting against, the songs that crest high and desperately until they were choked.

  
  


Until they were screams.

  
  


The bright blue water of her home was stained in gore and Rey could smell the thick iron scent cut with salt and the honey of distant mead.

  
  


Rey had lain her head down that night and for several nights to come on the porous wood that kept her submerged enough that the gills along her throat could draw in the sharp sting of the sea but it bobbed above the surface with the current and allowed her to watch as the ship and sailors it carried fade into the lilac stripe of the horizon.

  
  


Tears mix with seawater, brine in her throat, in her lungs, hot and dry against her cheeks. She’d been afraid, so very afraid to be alone after a youth cultivated by dozens of warm hands guiding her and the crooning call of a mother who cared. No one cared for the lonely, for the orphaned pup with a sluggish tail and who hadn’t grown into her moony stare. Worse than being lonely, had been the feeling of being trapped by this water-faring tomb; the wood was rough against her and she hated it, carved little tally marks with every rise and set of the sun.

  
  


She could swim out of the barrel and into the great blue depths beneath her but Rey knew better than to leave the shelter it provides, she heard her mother warn that she’s a little thing and the ocean shows no kindness, does not blunt its teeth for anyone; not even warm belly pups with eyes that shine like sunstone in the wan dawn light. And so she waited ; trusted in the motion of the sea that it will carry her to a shore -- near or far, with a plentiful reef and shallows to feed in.

  
  


***

It took two weeks (fourteen marks she’d counted bitterly); her hunger was sharp and bright and it had her teeth needling whatever drifted too close to the lip of the barrel before it was pillowed against white sand. Rey slipped out of her home cautiously -- afraid as she drinks in the sights, sounds, and scents of her new home. It’s quiet, clear water that’s unbroken aside from a long slough of wood that smells like the sailors that took her tribe (it smells of man , and those are the only ones she’s known in all her short life) with a forest of kelp and coral underneath it.

  
  


She hid, darting in and out of the anemones that stung her silken tail that had already begun to harden in her growth towards maturity; scales bloomed in an array of blues and tawny browns.

  
  


Rey smiled at them one morning, lying near the surface with an urchin on her belly and a rock in either hand -- she’d watched some otters do it, they’d squealed with fear when she’d drifted closer to learn, oblivious to her nature as a predator and their fear as prey. She had no mother to hunt for her, her teeth are grown in but they are short and better suited to tearing into something already dead and white and willowy as loaches hung from its underbelly -- a whale, she thinks, with its eyes grey and ribs latticed with a dozen of her kind.

  
  


Memory doesn’t feed her, however, and Rey’s blunt nails scraped uselessly against abalone, scallops, and muscles hard shells, outswam by the silver schools of fish and undersized for the few seals that barked their worries at her before darting away. She gave the sandy floor a rude snap of her tail and unearthed fragments on which she fed.

  
  


Greedy and violent and entirely alone.

  
  


Days passed and Rey busied herself with weaving the long strips of seaweed into a defensive nest; one she curls up in at night and ties an extra tight strand at the base of her tail, right where it splits into fins --it’s something her mother had done, to keep her from drifting away.

  
  


The morning when everything changed began like the rest of them; a yawn, her gills fluttering and another scale grown against the smooth, neoprene texture of her youthful tail. Rey preened at them, counted and groomed and admired how they shone under the coming dawn.

  
  


She’d been swimming further and further to test her strength and scent the open expanse of sea -- something new caught her focus, it was heavy and fat and slow like a manatee’s calf only it walked on two legs and babbled about the sand dollars it then threw into the water ( no sense to it , she’d thought, they’re dead as rocks ). Rey yelped in surprise when one plopped through the water immediately to her right, and slunk into the narrow shadows of the dock, only peeking her head above the surface to give a face to this cumbersome land beast.

  
  


It was a boy, stocky legged with a mop of brown hair and there’s a lady calling after it, calling it ‘Han’.

  
  


A cursory glance taught Rey two things; he had no fangs to speak of, no claws and was therefore unlikely to pose a genuine threat -- and it was headed straight for the water with little regard for its own safety.

  
  


What Rey assumes to be his mother, lets the pup wander close to the water, and worse , lets it start to swim. If you can call that swimming , Rey thought it moved more like a turtle caught on a fishing line.

  
  


Small feet and hands slap through the water and Rey hissed, using the wreath of seaweed behind her to hide from sight while keeping keen eyes fixed on his erratic motions.

  
  


He holds his breath and dives and with his face screwed up and a hand pinching his nose there’s no hope for it to see or smell any nearby dangers. It’s absurd -- what shite land mother was letting her pup flounder uselessly in inches that turn to feet from the pier.

  
  


Rey risked another look to the sand -- no sight of its caretaker, and the little thing was beginning to tire and so she uses all of her strength (and none of her self-preservation) and thrusts her tail to propel her into him - launching him back towards the shore, with her left exposed against the dry embankment. 

  
  


Vulnerable as she pushes herself back towards the water, Rey bared her teeth; anticipating violence or hate and finding only what she sees as a juvenile wonder in his wide, dark eyes.

  
  


“What are you?” He gasped, walking back down towards her as if he hadn’t nearly drowned, and as if she wasn’t some beastly thing with fangs and scales and a windy hiss in place of the solid words he speaks. “I won’t hurt ya.” His voice crests and it’s not the same as the men who took her mother, her sisters, and aunts; it has another shape to it, softer and Rey calmed visibly, even as wary as she was.

  
  


Rey chirps, I’m Rey , she’d tell him if her vocal chords served any purpose above the salty depth; ‘neath them she could weave a song sweet enough to lure men to their death -- or at least that’s what she’s meant to do when she’s older and beautiful and lethal all at once.

  
  


He blinked at her, head cocked, “You’re trying to speak to me, aren’t ya?” Rey nodded, she knew that much to convey yes , and Han smiled at her, plopping down to sit where the sand is dry but Rey could linger in the sea foam. “At least you understand me.” He seemed to consider something, reaching over to grab some driftwood with a pointed end that he then uses to write where the sand is damp, H A N. “That’s my name, Han .”

  
  


Han offered Rey the stick, and Rey proceeded to bite it, spitting out the splintered wood with a noise of confusion and disdain. Han just laughed at her, “No -- not -- you saw what I did with it, don’t eat it.” He sighed but it’s fond, Rey reached out and pawed through the sand; her language wasn’t written, but she couldn’t very well communicate that. She tried to mimic what he’d done, and her H was fairly convincing, the rest was an impatient mess and she hisses at the rivets she’d drawn in the sand, accusatory.

  
  


“Er.” Han scratched at the back of his neck; hair drying from the sun above and it’s left salt white on his skin. “Close enough. I’ll call you ---” He considered her a moment, “Fishy.” Rey knew what a fish was, and does not appreciate being likened to one, and her sounds of protest have him flinching away, a smile like razor wire bared .

“Okay okay -- not fishy.” Han doesn’t know enough about the sea to give her another name, so he stuck to called her ‘she’. “Wish you could talk, no one around here for miles and the best friend I’ve found can’t speak.” Rey understood him well enough, and set her chin between her hands, tail flapping mildly in the rising tide. Her hair’s started to dry and it’s an odd sensation, it itched between her fledgling wings and her arms weren’t long enough to reach it, she chirped at Han, twisting a bit to expose the tan expanse of her back and gave it a wriggle. He stared at her in confusion and Rey continued to make sounds that conveyed absolutely nothing helpful.

  
  


They were going to need a better way to communicate because her voice served one purpose above sea level and she’s both too young to do anything with it, and uninterested in what it therein implied.

  
  


Han’s the only human she’s met who had brought her no harm, who looked at her with no malice and made conversation with her (to the best of his ability).

  
  


Each morning, Han walked down to the pier and sat in the wan sunlight that shone in prismatic, broken beams through the overhead cloud bank. It burned off by the time he’d fully settled, and warmed the shallows through which Rey swam delightedly, woken by the call of the gulls and his feet pattering against the water’s surface.

  
  


She’d bring him a wide variety of shellfish, and he’d crack them open with a shucking knife he kept strapped to his thigh -- the white meat exposed and divided: half for him, half for her. In return, Rey taught him to swim (well, more effectively than he had before), he grew stronger every day, tanned by the unyielding sun bank throughout summer’s height and each time he’d swim out further, and Rey would be there watching and waiting.

  
  


Rey grew, too, and as summer bled into fall and the skies darkened with autumn storms, Han came to visit her less frequently. She understood, objectively, that he couldn’t spend all of his free time down at the pier or in the now admittedly chilled water, but that did little to make her feel less isolated by her newfound independence.

  
  


He’d taught her how to hunt; teeth sharper, jaw stronger -- she grew more quickly than he did, more pronouncedly. Even when the months were lost to years and he took on the hardened shape of a young man, and not the pudgy useless thing he’d been when they first met, Rey blossomed, every bit the savage beauty her kind was meant to be.

  
  


Her scales came in a spectrum of blues and golds; tawny like the sand and cerulean like the sky. She spent hours every day cleaning them, scrubbing with kelp and pumice to help them shine; vanity was exhausting in a way she’d never truly appreciated, her instinct guided her hand more than memory, by now. 

  
  


Her fifth summer in the shallows and she’d begun to show signs of maturity; only ten years of age, but the rapid maturation would plateau relatively soon. Humans, as it turned out, grow slower; Han said he’s a young man though, and the last time she saw him before their longest time apart, he warned of a war to the north, to the west and the south. He’d had shadows on his jaw and a look in his eyes that made sorrow well in her gut. Rey understood, she always did, she couldn’t very well go with him.

  
  


Rey waited though; she stuck to the shoreline and only ventured out a way into the deep to feed. As time passed, and her hunger became the only part of her that grew, she feared for her friend, she begged to the old gods that he’d be safe and she prayed to Aphrodite that the sea foam that licked the sandbank was rich with power and promise and faith.

  
  


It was another two years before she saw him, and by this time Rey was fully grown. Her wings shone like sapphire filtered through with mottled sunlight and her hair hung low, past the feminine swell of her hips; she’d taken to the tradition of ornamentation. Weaving pearls, shells and shiny trinkets that washed ashore through the chestnut waves. She made friends with the seals; able to communicate as effectively with them as she had with Han (even if they’d had more of an unspoken bond, it was the truest one she’d known). She saw him on the hilltop, outlined by the house in which he’d been raised; it butted up against the sea, a cliff to one side and an embankment that rolled down to the sand and pier and water’s edge on the other.

  
  


Rey had stared up at the stone building daily, shrieking her frustrations before dipping into a cavern she’d carved out from the reef. Her jaw worked over and she’d begun to sing; only now she can scent him, only now she can see .

  
  


He walked down to the pier; he’s got a limp now and there’s something haunted in his eyes but she chirped her delight, and her wings flexed above the water’s surface and he flinched -- unexpected, but not enough to deter him from continuing until he’s face to face with the once innocent pup that had become every inch the she-beast of lore.

  
  


“Yassou,” He greets her, hand raised before he tucked it into the shallow pockets of his slacks; rolled up to the knee and held by suspenders, the shelling blade in place at his side as it’d been so many moons ago. He looks familiar, but everything else smells of change.

Rey hung off the edge of the pier, arms folded and head rested between them while her tail moves with the ebb and flow of the sea, paddling faintly while she’s hefted mostly above the surface, watching him as if no time had passed.

  
  


“I know,” He huffs, and sits beside her, pulling out his knife and gesturing for Rey to go retrieve them a snack; she did so with a happy, aquine purr.

  
  


Her feeding habits shifted dramatically in Han’s absence; no shellfish, strictly warm-blooded seafaring mammals. While it suited her pallet perfectly, it was not because she lacked the claws and strength to break open the shells to get at the supple meat within (she was more than capable, now; lined in ropes of muscle and armed with talons that cut through the thick rubbery hide of small whales), the taste of it brought pain by way of memories she thought she’d never again have the gift of revisiting first hand. But there he was, and Rey’s resurfaced with a plentiful bounty, all smiles even when his own doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

  
  


Rey all-but inhaled every morsel as it’s opened and presented to her; and after a few moments she saw that Han had not eaten any himself, and she pushed the shrinking pile of scallops towards him with her furrowed brow.

  
  


“Not hungry kid.” He shrugged, and Rey who does not at all believe him, huffs, wings uncurling just enough to slap at the surface of the water. Han gave her a hard look just then, scratching at the back of his neck with one hand while its twin idly twirled his knife through his fingers, Rey watched, anxiety stiffening the dorsal spines along her back.

  
  


“While I was away I met someone.” He’s phrased this very carefully, and Rey, who has had no reason to be jealous before, is consumed by it, teeth exposed as her lips pull back and Han sort of makes a sound like stop that , and so she does. “I had a son, got married; bought the place from my parents -- property value plummeted after the war.” He explains and she’s able to keep up with him, only blinking her reply. “Now -- I didn’t tell her about you, figured all you lady types are best kept separated -- no offense. But I did tell her and my boy to keep away from the sea. It’s nothing personal, but the guys got to talking when we were overseas and just -- I can’t run the risk. I know you’re not like the rest of your kind, I know you’re good .” Han tapped the space above his heart emphatically, but Rey’s features are lined with hurt and confusion in equal measure, and tears bite the inner corners of her eyes.

She slinks away when he moved towards her, an apology caught in the thick of his throat because it’s clear that he’s made a mistake, “I’m sorry. You were --- are my friend, kid.” Rey wanted to point out that she’s his elder if maturation is anything to go by, but he can’t understand her, and evidently, he never had.

***

She’d never likened herself to a monster; but in the months and years that follow, she’d become every bit the one Han had recused her of.

  
  


The reports of missing sailors, of entire groups of families, lost while recreational boating and the loss of small smuggling vessels, cargo and all permeated the news by word of mouth and printed on paper, there’s no doubt to the one man who knew what lurked beneath the surface of the water -- and still, no hunting parties came. Rey had half expected him to visit, pike in hand, but all she got were fleeting glimpses of him and his family - a boy now knee-high pointing frantically to the sea and Han curbing him with a hand on his shoulder and a shake of his head.

  
  


She hated that, hated him; if he would not come to the shore, Rey could make him. Rey could bring wrath and ruin to his doorstep; leaving trinkets from the dead on his porch. Her wings aren’t just for show, after all, and a scorned beastie is not tethered by the morality of man. She retreated into the deep more and more frequently, finding security when swathed by the darkness and no longer vulnerable to the creatures it hides.

  
  


Aphrodite guide her , forgive her; it is in her nature to do these things, to be this monster with fang and claw, tail and wing.

  
  


Han’s words rattled around her brain, conflicted with instinct, they war and eclipse her until she’d been paralyzed by doubt and indecision. I know you’re not like the rest of your kind, I know you’re good. Was she, though? Any different? Rey felt the changes her body underwent; the way her jaw can stretch, and the way her teeth can cut through flesh, and muscle, sinew, and bone until even the hulls of fisherman’s boats could be torn through by her unhinged maw.

  
  


Her once friend and his family had been gone for days, and the pile of gifts she left grew; at the point in which it spilled off the modest porch, Rey was hunting for pleasure, not food.

  
  


Rey was sunbathing on an outcropping of sea-polished stone when Han came to her next. His face a storm of anger and incredulity but Rey showed him nothing, impassivity from head to tail, a nod to acknowledge him but otherwise she remained focused on braiding a nautilus shell through the ends of her hair.

“Don’t ignore me, girl.” His voice dark, and Rey rolled onto her belly to look up at him from where he stands at the pier’s edge. “What the fuck is this?” There’s spittle in the corners of his dry lips, twisted and angry -- but he’s holding a necklace aloft, the thready silver chain twisting from the weight of the locket swinging from it. “What. Is. This.” When she ignores him, and he chucks a sunbleached scallop at her in the hopes to either provoke an explanation or chase her away.

  
  


What a fool he’d been to think he was enough to change the nature of a monster that crawled from the Hellmouth of his people’s lore.

  
  


He’d seen the picture inside; known it belonged to one of his smugglers personally. Tobias Beckett, a dear friend, and mentor lost to the unforgiving sea -- no, to her , to the creature he’d called a friend and now he had clarity -- she’d never been anything but what lies before him then, all beauty and wile and cruelty.

  
  


“Stay away from me,” Han yells, and Rey shrieks a reply that’s enough to make the hair on his arm, and the back of his neck, stand on end. It made his stomach churn and sent every instinct in him running: predator, to prey. “Stay away from my family. If you come near them -- I will keep them safe by any means necessary.”

  
  


Rey hadn’t expected any differently; the trophies from her kills weren’t anything other than omens for what she was capable of, and what she would do. Though his promise of violence stung; she would not have it come to that -- for all her hate and bile now, she’d never hurt him or his family deliberately.

  
  


She knew the pain of losing those you love most of all.

  
  


Her word was given - no harm would come to them, and though Han cannot speak her shrill tongue, there’s unspoken communique that passed and he’s satisfied enough to walk away and leave Rey to her regained isolation. She cannot fault him, and so she doesn’t, but losing that which was all she had left is a heavy yoke on her shoulders, regret blurred the edges of her temperament.

  
  


And so, she strayed further from the land and sea that had been her home, her playground, where she’d learned to hunt, and what had once been her nursery. It had raised her into who and what she was today, and though it’s been made quite clear that her ‘kind’ was unwelcome, Rey couldn’t muster the strength of self to be so far gone that she cannot see the lip of his house and the swell of the hill on the far horizon.

***

There are tales of Siren’s saving those who fell into the sea, so close to the weavers of fate they knew it was not their time and rescued them from certain death in lieu of only killing. Women and children mainly yes, and they serve no purpose to the she-beasts who need the seed of man to continue on their respective bloodlines.

  
  


Rey’s saved no one but Han that day he’d swam too far out and so began their friendship; it’s hard to even now think on it -- she’d let him be, kept her word, but still she swam not too far and visited that familiar shore in the thick of night with only the moons and stars as company. 

  
  


It was this night, many many days and months and perhaps years later (Rey aged not; she measured life by the taste of blood between her jaws and the shape of a fading heartbeat under her palm), that she would be an unwitting savior - the defender of the very people she swore no harm to come to.

  
  


What gods had listened be fair, as Rey scented someone new walking towards the dock, heard even from afar the slew of curses under their breath. Rey lingered in the kelp forest, looking up as the glassy water obscures her sight of who it was -- a boy (a man), hair as dark as the night sky above and a face that’s an echo of his father’s. It must be his son , Rey concluded, tail-anchored to the barnacle-clad leg of the pier.

  
  


There’s a storm rolling in, hard and fast and the rocking of the waves make the aged wood groan and shudder, and Rey tightens her grip to ensure she’s not thrown about by the undertow. She could hear him listing off his many reasons for being upset, praying that Poseidon will grant him strength and it made Rey smile crookedly, a fondness already a blooming warmth behind her bare breasts.

  
  


What happened next was lightning fast; more as thunder brokered no argument above and perhaps it was the jealousy of Zeus that he’d ask for the love of his brother and not the King of Kings and Lord of gods -- the sea upends and white light forks across the dark sky, followed by a splash that’s heavy and has Rey twisting to look at the boy from above, sinking like a stone; even more proof that he was Han’s son -- useless, cumbersome land beast.

Rey lets go of the dock and fights against a riptide that’s empowered by the growing storm and so the ocean churns, bubbling as though heated to a boil. The froth of the sea licks at the shore and it’s a sight that fills Rey with power, too; for hers was the goddess of the deeps who was birthed from the foam that paints a green stripe where the shore meets the sea. Her wings unfurl and behave as a boat’s rudder might while powerful strokes from her tail move her through the strongest of waves as if they pose no resistance.

  
  


Her arms snap out to wrap around his waist and be it the shock of the fall, or the gratitude at being saved he does not fight her.

  
  


“You’re safe,” To her surprise, he understands; the sea filters out the trill of her voice and softens aquine edges until her speech is comprehended even by sons of the earth and land. Rey’s far too distracted by saving him to truly appreciate this discovery so late in a life spent silent, quiet, and misunderstood -- she carried him safely to shore, and as if in thanks the storm relented, even if just for that moment.

  
  


Rey let him go, and he scrambled back up with his heels digging into the loam of wet sand, and she tried not to let the dejection of his fear, show.

  
  


“What are you?” He splutters, coughing on a lung full of brine. Rey’s chirps are still chirps on land and it’s all she can do to fan her wings, curl her tail around as to showcase the shape of the creature who’d saved him. Bare chest exposed, there’s an adolescent glint to sable eyes when they inevitably are drawn to it, and Rey preens when he moved closer, hand held aloft -- a mirror, from so long ago.

  
  


“I’m Ben,” He tries, voice gone rough as though to whisper. Rey pressed her cheek into his palm and her eyes draw shut as a rippling purr worked its way up her throat. “My father told me not to come to the water -- we got in a fight, and I thought it best to disobey.” Ben didn’t seem to regret his decision, full lips half-curled into a small smile. “I’m glad I did, you’re a beautiful thing, and had I gone any other time you might not have been here to save me.”

  
  


I know you’re not like the rest of your kind, I know you’re good. I know you’re not like the rest of your kind, I know you’re good. I know you’re not like the rest of your kind, I know you’re good--- maybe on this one thing, Han had been right.

  
  


She smiled broadly, unbothered by the teeth it showed; all razored edges meant to hook into her prey without the chance of it breaking free, her claws splayed against the sand and they too are telling of the predator Rey was; but Ben looks on her in wonder only and she feels something stir low in her gut.

  
  


“I could hear you, under the water.” Rey nods at that, another avian sound passes her lips and earned herself another one of his grins, “Maybe when the sea isn’t set on killing me, I’ll come down and talk to you. It’d be nice, to not only have my parents to speak to.” Ben cast a look over his shoulder; caught between resentment and adolescent ire when another flash of lightning illuminated the house sitting pretty on the hill. The thunder has him flinch, and Rey’d already moved towards the waves, licking at her translucent fin and tempting her back towards her home - she can, and had spent long periods of time on land but her lungs feel brittle and the thrill of change is heavy.

  
  


“I’ll come back, I promise.” And that too makes Rey’s heart twist, caught in a vice. She nodded her belief to him and disappeared beneath the sea.

It was different with Ben.

  
  


In much of the same fashion as his father, he’d come down to the shore daily; but there was no weight of duty in his steps. Ben was alive with the seafoam and brine clipped air; smiled into the kiss of the wind and waded through the shallows without the scent of fear. Rey preened, circling his legs and filled the water with a song that speaks of hope.

  
  


He would watch her for hours, swim out to the spine of grey-rock that pierced the surface with all the hate that the land holds for the sea, and watch. His dark eyes warmed as Spring nipped at Summer’s heel and Rey’s fondness for the boy grew too. He was stronger than his father had been, able to keep pace well enough when Rey swam deep; and his lungs held more breath that she could speak to him under the waves.

  
  


It was different with Ben.

  
  


He looked at her with wonder, shared in the morsels she’d pry from the sea-floor; he’d tell her about the world of man, automobiles, the advantages of modernization but how it stole from them their piety, their appreciation for the warmth of the sun and the salt of the sea. Rey would chirp her malcontent, tawny brows furrowed and Ben would laugh because she was free; a Siren could not know the weight of expectations, what was demanded of him both as a man and as the last of the Solo line.

  
  


Lineage meant little to her, her brood would be female without question and they’d have names that tell stories and names on which men pinned their fears and shortcomings. Rey meant King , and so she ruled this thatch of ocean, dared any other to draw near. Sirens are social, her instincts twist and writhe at this continued imposition of loneliness, but she knew none that was not Ben and Han, Solos both.

  
  


Rey did often wonder what shape life took for him when he disappeared over the hill, too far for her keen eyes to see. Perhaps it stopped altogether; object permanence at war with her fiercely possessive needs. She wanted for him to exist here only, when he spoke lowly, calmly; an old friend at her ear and not a doubter, a hunter, or a sycophant.

  
  


She saw Han in the angle of his jaw, his nose and the way he clicked his teeth and worked his mouth over in frustration when tying a knot for the small boat that bobbed in the shallows. Rey could not understand the necessity of it; swimming was infinitely more effective than paddling with broad oars, and actually therein enjoyable. It did allow Ben to go farther out, though, and Rey circled the wooden underbelly in waiting for him to join her.

  
  


The hard splash of him breaking the surface tension has Rey’s gills filtering out loud sounds of delight, “Your boat is ugly.” She commented, and Ben rolls his eyes, a steady stream of bubbles trickling out when he speaks.

  
  


“It is effective. Made it out of olive-wood with ---” He stopped and moved upwards to take in a few more gulps of air -- but Rey knew that he wouldn’t have finished that sentence either way. Knew how it ended, and how it’d make her feel.

  
  


Made it with my dad .

***

Ben hadn’t told Han about his daily activities; the old smuggler assumed (wrongly) that his son was engaging in properly nefarious endeavors -- not unlike those that’d half-crippled his father and nearly left Leia a widow. He knew Han wouldn’t approve, but more than that it’d be another knot of disappointment on the long, tangled thread of their familial tapestry. The name of Solo was dying out and at this rate, wasn’t going to live past Ben.

  
  


With the way he looked at Rey though, a nameless longing, a placeless demand on his heart to belong with someone, some thing , that was both impossible and therein concerning. Rey’s beautiful, more than that she’s miraculous and outside of his perfectly ordinary life, his greatest accomplishment has been the gift that is getting to know her. She’s brilliant, once they’d conquered the barrier of their respective vocalizations and how to best communicate; ancient beings, as it turned out, are as wise as the legends founded on them would suggest. Ben would spend every minute of his life hearing her regale about her people; stories passed by word of mouth and ingrained into her very biology.

  
  


Of course; summer’s end loomed again and Ben faced down the oncoming Fall with a resentment better reserved for a personal offense, and not the inconvenience and the inevitability of the season’s change.

  
  


He hated how the days grew shorter and in the dark, he was helpless in the sea. Rey’s vision was that of a predator’s and she could navigate the encroaching blackness with ease; he’d wished then, not for the first time, that he could be as she was -- a life guided by nature’s hand and not the growing demands placed on him by his father. Ben sighed then, watching the sapphire skyline shift as the sun dipped low, its golden belly throwing shadows all around him and Rey’s scales glinted faintly as if she’d come from the heavens above and made the world more beautiful for housing her in its seas.

  
  


Ben sighed when he inevitably dragged himself from the rising shore, grabbing the tether line from his boat to tie it to the cleat in the dock; tightening it incrementally so it wouldn’t drag roughly against the wind-wake that has white caps formed as the promise of a storm whispered through the heavy dusk. 

  
  


He stared at her then, squinting to allow the last bit of sun outlines her in a silhouette of wan, gilded light.

  
  


He’d never wished less , to leave.

***

  
  


“I gotta go Rey.” He said, but Rey knows it means she’d see him tomorrow. He never smiled when he had something else to see to, but in that moment before he actually turned to walk away, she thought she saw something in his eyes. Something both foreign and familiar; something natural, as the wind shifts and her long, russet hair is carried over her shoulder; breasts then bared.

  
  


It is want ; Rey knew it all too well.

  
  


Want sat like a stone in her belly that burned hot, turned from cinders to sparking coal whenever Ben was too near for too long -- that night proved to be no exception. Her gills flattened until they melted into the column of her throat and her features softened from something of the sea to an enticing creature determined to pretty herself up for the landfaring boy who has not once blinked. She’d fear he’d gone to stone if it wasn’t for the steady rise and fall of his shoulders and chest. He’s breathing, but it’s labored, perhaps even pained .

  
  


So go , Rey dared, eyes flashing as stars twinkle enigmatically to life above.

  
  


Ben’s hands twitched at his sides where they hung idly, worn from days in the sand and sea; tanned by the sun and rough from the twine of shipping ropes and fishing line. He’d been a boy once, Rey can remember it as clearly as his father before him; she could paint images of his life and of his family and yet Rey can no longer name her own -- her mother’s face faded into the background of a life that’s been led against every fibre of her calling, of her creed.

  
  


But there he was, standing as a vision of white linen and tan cotton and hair being tossed about by the alkaline breeze. Rey slipped off the ragged outcropping and into the sea; but only so she could drift along with the tide, water lapped softly and the wind crooned. Rey looked up at him, curious to the scent of his that’s changed; dark and dripping down the back of her throat, nearly venomous if it weren’t for the intoxicating effect.

  
  


Rey’s kind existed in a singular fashion: hunt, sing, kill, breed.

  
  


It was not a matter of morality; as the shark is not questioned for its need to slaughter nor the wolf its hunting of sheep. Her mother would have told her something similar, Rey’s certain, had she heard the clang of warring wants and needs, thoughts and desires. The din is so loud she almost misses Ben speaking.

  
  


“I don’t want to.” Leave , Rey assumes, the set of his jaw has the thick vein running parallel to it, pulsing and she wonders if it’s as warm as the rest of him. She knew that men have thick blood, but not as thick as hers -- they wore clothes to stave off the elements and Rey could brave the worst of winters entirely unphased. But she could not mimic the heat and strength of their heartbeats and so she’d come to enjoy swimming beside him because of it - it blanched out into the sun-soaked shallows and sent her pulse hammering.

  
  


The night was young though, with only the moon bright overhead as if Selene blessed this daughter of Aphrodite, she illuminated the world around them until it was only a darker shade of day. A hundred thousand stars observed them, and the silence speaks more than they’d ever muster the courage to say.

  
  


Sirens did not court, they did not posture or play; her throat begins to rattle as a song blooms in her lungs but she swallows it down, unwilling to strip him of his agency. Battling her biology, her instinct for the sake of a young man who she’d known all his life; Rey cannot be the one to hurt him, not only had she promised Han, there existed no desire within her to maim. She wanted only to touch him, to let her hands wander over the broad planes of his architecture and feel whatever marble the gods invented to carve him out of; Adonis, that he was.

Rey cemented herself on the bank of the shore, seafoam thick over her tail and catching in her wings’ snare while they continue to look on one another with twin desire, desperation, and despair.

  
  


When Ben stepped forward, Rey inched back into the water, and his brows knit with confusion, lips pulled into a frown.

  
  


How could she explain herself? How could she want and deny identically, and in the same stroke?

  
  


She’d never felt this heady rush; desire potent, hot and heavy where it swirls someplace between her womb and her stomach; telling and demanding of everything she’d been denied. Rey supposed by now she could have a half dozen pups, teach them all that she’d learned independently -- but all she wanted truly was to know if his lips are as soft as his smile suggests or if his hands were good for more than rowing.

  
  


He walks forward again, and Rey’s back into the sea until only her shoulders and head remain above water, fixed towards him but statuesque in that not even the ebb and flow of the black waves around her move her from her place. It’s a dance, wasn’t it? Courting in such a way as only two inexperienced partners can -- neither Rey nor Ben have known the touch or gifted end of intimacy, and it shows, weighing like an unspoken thread that’s drawn tighter and tighter but doesn’t allow them to touch.

  
  


“Rey,” his voice had gone low and deep -- it sent a shiver up her spine that had little to do with the falling temperature of the air around them. “Don’t be afraid.” He approached, hands held aloft as if he’d never before met her, and she was some skittish, waifish deer and not a feral sea beast. She could bare her teeth, ought to have, but Rey did not move from her place, anchored by her tail wrapped around the dock’s beams.

  
  


“I feel it too.”

  
  


What it was that he felt must’ve been this nameless, endless cycling; a snake with a mouth full of venom that’s turned around to bite its own tail, filling her with heat, and with dread.

  
  


Rey shook her head slowly, the hair trapped by the water’s surface tension billowed out behind her, a chestnut that shone darker in the moonlight. “Please.” Only one hand remained between them, his other gripped the side of the pier as he guided himself by feel alone towards the creature who now, no longer moved away.

  
  


Her own arm is lifted and she reached for him; sharp claws ghost along the latticework of his vasculature, prominent underneath his pale skin. He’s beautiful and just as warm as she’d remembered from when he’d drifted too close swimming before. Ben touched her too, his palm is rough against Rey’s sensitive inner arm -- but he hooked his thumb and forefinger around her bicep to draw her closer to him.

  
  


The tension ran thicker and thicker until Rey could scarcely breathe (maybe it was the dense fog that sat far off-shore, or maybe it’s how they were nearly chest to chest, her own heaved with the weight of each expanse of her lungs) the spikes along her spine rigid, defensive, but she’d gone soft everyplace else they touched.

  
  


Ben leaned forward, his breath smelled like scallops and the faint honey taste of mead; but he’s moved to put his mouth on hers and Rey hisses, alarmed by the gesture until he tutted his tongue -- a sound to reassure, and so it does. The sensation was … not wholly enjoyable just then, her lips went taut over her teeth; more out of fear that the razor-edges would harm him, than displeasure with how he moved his own. He reads her tension, and his hands ride higher on her arms until the coarse pad of his thumb is tracing the thin skin over her throats hollow, following the rhythm of her pulse.

  
  


“If you want me to stop, I will,” Ben explained gently, breath broken where it fogs the cold air growing hot between them. She did not want that, his nearness was comforting in a way that rekindled her innate drive to socialize -- to be around others and touched, talked to, but how Ben moved around her, alien to the sea, was somehow grounding.

  
  


She shook her head, unable to speak efficiently above the surface, but it was all he needed and moved back to -- what he explained, hushed, as kissing.

  
  


Rey doesn’t yet know what to make of it, she does engage in the act, frozen when he swept his tongue over the seal of their lips and she immediately makes a sound that was caught between aroused, and predatory. He tasted familiar and foreign both, Rey leaned into it just then; the frills along the length of her tail stiffening and shifting in automatic response.

Her body knew what experience failed to teach, and there’s an effortlessness when her arms twined around his neck and their bodies went flush against one another. He’s standing tall, sand solid underneath his feet and Rey’s tail is still anchored, unwinding so she can, instead, shift it so the narrow tip is latched around his calves. He wobbled in place once, and his hands fell to her waist, but otherwise, he did not falter and continued to kiss Rey.

  
  


Biology and instinct were companionable bedfellows just then -- she could feel where he grew hard between them, trapped by his slacks and the frame of her hips right where her skin transitions into scales.

  
  


There were logistical hiccups; one such instance was when his palm drifted lower until the softness of her stomach became the rough hew of the scales underneath -- biology told him to find her sex, to touch it and know that she wanted him, as was due by his painfully obvious arousal, and where it pressed against her hotly. However, his luck was lost amid unfamiliar anatomy, and Rey, who’d been so focused on this kissing business, hadn’t the mind to aid him.

  
  


He made a sound of frustration, a huff against her lips, and Rey swallowed it, confusion in why he’d stopped moving, so she chirped.

  
  


“I’m ---” Even in the dark of night, Rey could see where mottled blush on his throat had crawled high and tight to his cheeks, stopping someplace where his hair hides his ears. She knew by now that it meant he was embarrassed to continue, and so she tries to figure it out herself. The positioning of his hand; four fingers curled around the shell of her hip-bone, was rather telling, and she shudders once more.

  
  


The sensitive membrane of her wings and frills are all alight when she drifted away from him - just far enough to stretch out the length of her body, electric where she held onto Ben’s legs with the firm end of her tail. She lifted both wings, one at a time, from the water and his eyes grew wide in watching; he’d rarely seen them, the seafaring thing that she was, and they served no purpose here outside of the hunt.

  
  


Ben wasn’t prey just yet; and she’s filing down the serrated edges of her sexuality in the hopes that it won’t end in blood, what they’d started then.

  
  


She inched closer to him, wings pinned to her sides and scales rippling underneath the water’s surface as if they were liquid themselves. Of course, it was a necessary measure; as it drew from the sharp line of the dorsal spines, and the thin skirt of a fin around her waist to reveal to him her sex.

  
  


“ Oh .” He would write not odysseys, no Epics that would regale the world of his adventures and cow all skeptics of their legitimacy; but Rey could feel clearly the shock and awe in that single syllable, and she preened underneath his roving, hungry eyes. He touched her, the tip of his forefinger riding the sensitive skin that’d been exposed; protective scales retreat and his wonder and desire slip-slide over the other in their rush to take priority.

  
  


Rey does snarl at that; surprise and the bright spot of pleasure with being touched for the first time. Her hips snap up and press her cunt into the broad spread of his palm, his finger curls into her, and Rey’s head falls forward, brow against his collarbone and her breath hot where it breaks over his chest. The fabric of his shirt is soaked through, linen that’s transparent and rough, unpleasant where it’s rubbing against her bare skin, so she tears at the buttons to access the musculature underneath.

  
  


The finesse to follow has them both at a loss; navigating a singular tail instead of twin legs has the transition from a fumbling, virginal touch to penetration prolonged and exacerbated until they’re both huffing out their respective frustrations.

  
  


Rey’s dorsal spines are hard, scraping against the wood of the pier’s pillar at her back and Ben’s shrugged off his tattered shirt, let the sea claim it and he’s moved to fumble with the leather lacing at the front of his pants. Her claws are far more effective than blunt human hands, so she batted his away, and doesn’t stop carving through the layers until she feels the hard planes of his skin.

  
  


“Rey----” Ben chokes on her name and it ignited something deep inside her, the power of a predator unleashed by the hand of someone she’d always wanted, and never pursued.

  
  


She kissed him first this time around, and Ben’s groans echo into her mouth; she takes them in eagerly, wanton with such a ferocity that she can scent fight of flight on the tip of his tongue. It makes her fins curl as a tingling electricity surged through her from head, to … well, tail .

  
  


There’s that moment right before Ben presses inside of her; cold and hot, wet from the sea like ice on his bruised cock head, wet from her cunt that’s pouring from her, nearly molten as he shifts and feels the folds of skin tight against him. Siren’s were, by and far, human where it mattered; that is why they sang to men, that is why they bred with them.

  
  


Ben’s not just a man to Rey; he’s her only friend, her dearest one, and there are ten thousand risks in jeopardizing that relationship.

  
  


She’d never been very good at self-restraint.

  
  


He’s seated fully inside her in a single thrust; it’s uncomfortably tight but there’s no physical barrier, no ideology of virginity where things are all natural, where there’s sex and pleasure and it is chosen, it is nearly worshipped by those engaged in the act. The constructs and ideology of man, telling that sex is a sin without matrimony; she’d heard murmurs from sailors, felt the want for their taste on her tongue (in what way? In the flesh of taste and the carnal acts to follow).

  
  


Rey is the first one to move, using the leverage of the wood at her back and the natural procession of the rising tide. It makes them both gasp out; hers is damp in her mouth, catching on teeth designed to rend flesh from bone and instead leave small marks of possessive affection along the curvature of his shoulder and throat. There’s nothing particularly rhythmic about Ben’s thrusts; they’re shallow, what with the positioning of his legs astride her, with her tail sitting between them and its end anchored tighter and tighter to him.

  
  


Her pelvic muscles are far stronger than that of a human’s, at the base of a powerful tail and entwined with the architecture of a skilled swimmer; and so she’s drawing on Ben’s threadbare experience, her body coaxes, her body demands, edging him closer as the lapping of the sea against the shore and their respective, labored breathing colors the night in a taboo symphony.

  
  


It wasn’t the beautiful cliche she’d heard play over the songs of her sisters, but it felt good enough, and Ben’s heartbeat tells her more than the words that were garbled by moans and grunts. His hips snapped more and more erratically against hers, and so she’d tightened the serpentine hold she’d had on him until not a drop of water could pass between their bodies and the rattle of his pulse can be felt, as well as seen as she laves at the base of his pale throat.

  
  


Rey felt the effect of ten thousand years of biology telling her what comes next; when Ben’s cock stiffens and his breathing smells of fogged desperation. Her eyes bled black, pupils swallowed every trace of white, what was once hazel succumbs to the violence of night; she’s panting, ragged, and felt saliva pool between her lips and teeth. It tells her to kill and howls for the flash of crimson against his mole dotted hide.

  
  


Milk him of his seed, bleed him dry; leave him empty, hollowed out, feast on the corpse and let fester the remainder that sinks to the seafloor.

  
  


Ben spilled inside of her as if he could hear the spell written instinctually into the forefront of her mind, branded to the backs of her eyes; she shrieked, the sound haunted and violent and he feared he’d done something wrong -- he tries to comfort Rey just then, a hand to her chest to slow her panicked breathing and it’s when her gills flare out from where they’d hidden inside of her skin, and her teeth gnash at the space between them, that Ben recoiled. Finally aware that she’s a threat, and that he was in great peril.

  
  


This was what she’d feared, frantic, fraught with the knowledge that she may very well be the death of the only person for which she’d ever cared. It has her song riding high into the night, mournful and hypnotic all the same.

  
  


Ben tried to pull himself back onto the pier, shaken from the cold, and from the physical toll of breeding with something like she, like Rey. He’d almost succeeded, too; but she moved as quickly as a riptide and lashed out at him before he could escape completely. Long claws split down the center of his face, catching and ending someplace to the left of his chest; hot blood splashed into the water, onto her skin and she’s hissed all the while before she retreats into the kelp and coral -- too dark for him to see.

  
  


To see that she cried, afraid she’d be a slave to an instinct that demanded she kills the one and only thing that made her feel alive.

**Author's Note:**

> The Siren Rey's based off of.
> 
> Yassou -- hello in Greek.
> 
> [ The island on which Han lives ](https://cdn-image.travelandleisure.com/sites/default/files/styles/1600x1000/public/agios-sositis-mykonos-greece-bestbeaches0216.jpg?itok=DPvgfqkf)
> 
> Learn more about the Siren's of my lore [ here. ](https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Siren)
> 
> Always feel free to reach out to me on my [ tumblr! ](https://rey-kryze.tumblr.com)
> 
> Thank you all for reading. <3


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